Кристофер Голден - The Predator - The Official Movie Novelization

Good , she thought. Whatever had gotten its attention, she was grateful for the diversion. She raised the tranquilizer rifle, thinking it was probably out of range. Even so, she was desperate enough to take a shot.

Maybe it was her heart pounding in her ears or the intensity of her focus or the rumble of military vehicles behind her, but she didn’t hear the ship coming until it blasted across the sky—a silver pod that sheared through the atmosphere overhead with a boom that reverberated across Stargazer base. Casey froze, so caught up in the moment that when the sky opened again, her heart nearly stopped. A pair of F-22 fighter jets flashed overhead in the blink of an eye, their noise deafening, as if they’d just shattered heaven in two.

But heaven was somebody else’s problem. Casey’s was here on the ground.

The bus punched through a fence with a brittle clang and thundered forward, chain link whipping across the windshield and away. McKenna held onto the cage with one hand and knelt on a seat, scanning the compound. Nebraska drove like they were on a minefield, swerving back and forth, but he wasn’t avoiding anything—he kept bending to peer out the windshield, trying to get a look at the jets and the damn spaceship even as he eyed the buildings around and below them.

“Eyes on the fucking—” McKenna began.

The next word would have been road , of course. But McKenna lost track of his thoughts the moment he spotted the woman off to the right of the bus, running along a catwalk twenty feet off the ground. As he spotted her, the woman swung up onto a metal bridge, taking the high ground. McKenna tracked her, wondering if she was running away from something, or toward it. He checked her trajectory, and then he saw it.

For all its bulk, the alien moved fast. It leaped, agile as an ape, from one steel beam to another, above her, the woman just about keeping pace. McKenna’s eyes widened as he realized this one woman, who didn’t even look like a soldier, was the only person in the entire complex who seemed to be in foot pursuit of the space creature that had murdered his men. She had some kind of rifle in her hand, but from this distance he couldn’t identify the weapon.

What the hell does she think she’s doing? he thought.

The bus jerked to the left, Nebraska cursing at an obstacle that McKenna hadn’t seen. McKenna took a jolt, but held onto the gate, and when he glanced out the window again, he saw the woman raise the rifle—some sort of tranquilizer gun, like a zookeeper might use. She got off a shot, and then another, but whatever her ammo was, it smacked impotently into the steel beams. The creature leaped out, away from her, but McKenna didn’t think it was out of fear. It wasn’t fleeing its pursuer—it had a goal in mind.

As the bus roared forward, the alien suddenly dropped from overhead. It touched down dead ahead of them, but McKenna was only half paying attention as Nebraska swore and twisted the wheel to avoid it, the Loonies shouting from the back. The creature corkscrewed away from them, disappearing into the darkness. By this time, Coyle and Lynch had become aware of the woman as well. Together they watched her race to the end of the bridge she’d been on.

No way , McKenna thought. No fucking way is she going to —

But she did. He caught a glimpse of the determination on her face, and the terror that bloomed in her expression when she realized what she was doing, and then she was out of sight. The bus had passed right beneath her.

McKenna whipped his head back and stared at the ceiling of the bus, even as he heard the thump and roll of the woman landing on the roof above them. Coyle and Lynch grinned at each other.

“You gotta be kidding me!” Baxley shouted in excitement, pumping a fist.

Hold on , McKenna thought, but he’d already turned to look back out the windshield. He spotted the alien, heading for the perimeter fence like the White Rabbit, late for a very important date. McKenna flashed back to the jungle, to the sight of his men and the way they’d been torn apart.

“Open the door!” he barked.

Without hesitation, Nebraska jerked the lever, the door accordioned open, and McKenna gripped the sidearm he’d stolen from one of the MPs. He threw himself sideways onto the steps, poking his head out through the open door, and took aim. A flash of Jaws went through his mind. Smile, you son of a —he thought.

The air distorted around the alien as it ran. McKenna knew what that meant—he’d seen it in the jungle; hell, he’d used the tech himself. But before it turned invisible, the alien reached the perimeter fence and vaulted it easily. Still in midair, it threw back its arm in an almost casual gesture, and suddenly a spinning blade was flashing toward the bus.

McKenna felt the bus turn into a skid even before his brain registered the bang of the tire exploding. The bus slewed sideways, shuddering, whipped with such force that McKenna felt himself flung out the door. He tucked into a roll, tumbled across the ground, and came up on one knee just in time to look back and see the woman staggering on the roof. She was trying desperately to keep her footing, but looked like Bambi on the ice. McKenna saw the moment when she fired the tranq gun involuntarily, and as the bus shuddered to a ragged halt he saw her totter toward the edge of the roof and tip over, as if boneless as a rag doll . Only then did he realize she’d shot herself in the leg or the foot, and the tranquilizer had already taken effect.

By that time he was already up and racing toward the bus, wondering if he’d reach her in time, picturing her landing in his arms.

Then he spotted a cadre of security guards—those merc bastards who’d captured him in the first place—converging on the bus from the darkness, and he hesitated. Whereupon the woman landed with a whomp on the turf.

So much for Prince fucking Charming , he thought, as he ran to help her up.

Chagrined, he got her to her feet, but her legs were like silly putty and she hung around his neck, barely able to stand as the tranquilizer rushed through her bloodstream.

The Loonies scrambled out of the bus as the guards approached. Nebraska came out last, but he’d been scanning the compound the whole time he’d been driving, and it seemed he’d already figured out his plan. He pointed to a Quonset hut that looked to be the compound’s motor pool. A row of Indian Scout motorcycles was lined up in front.

Turning to the others, he shouted almost gleefully, “Get to the choppers!”

Pinsky had tried yoga a few times. He understood the concept, the way it was supposed to relax you, let you breathe and connect with your body. He wasn’t ever going to suggest that it didn’t work, because it had worked for him, to a certain degree. But other than some useful stretching, yoga didn’t provide anything to him that flying jets didn’t offer a hundred times over… and never more so than when he had a bogey in his sights.

“Light up your winders on my mark,” he said into his comms mic. “Go, zero-two! Go, zero-three!”

As the other members of his squadron banked off on either side to flank the once-again-visible ship that streaked across the sky below them, a blissful calm enveloped him. The world that existed for him now was only his ride, the voices on his comms, the steady in-out of his breathing, and the UFO he’d been tasked with blowing out of the fucking sky. He smiled to himself and thought of childhood visits to the dentist and the happy gas they’d given him when he’d needed a tooth pulled. Even the oxygen mask attached to his face reminded him of that day. There was no gas in the air he breathed—he wouldn’t be seeing dragons on the wall or thinking his mom had floppy puppy ears—but he felt the same elation.